How do you enforce Anarchy?

[libertylover]

how many people would have absolutely nothing to lose?

Isn't it a truism the poor will always be with you?

[markuzick]

This is one problem I see and it has nothing to do with one system being better than the other.  I have been a Libertarian my entire political life and after 25 years plus fighting the good fight.  I am just now flirting with the idea that an Anarchic system couldn't be any worse than the growing oppressive government we currently have.  But I am painful aware that there are many who refuse to see government as an oppressive system.  

Most people, including most libertarians such as yourself, view civil government as a necessary evil that must somehow be kept caged.

This misconception comes from the corrupting effect on our thinking that is caused by the pervasiveness of statist terminology. The statist definition of civil government is "the state".

The state may monopolise many things, but at least, so far, it has not monopolized the definition of civil government.

Once people realise that the voluntary model of civil government is not only possible, but that it exists in the real world and not just in some Utopian dream; that the achievement of a voluntary society is achievable by a peaceful evolution of our existing civilization through an increase in market demand for legitimate government by the consent of the governed over the aggression of the state; a new paradigm will arise among lovers of liberty that doesn't seek compromise with the rule of aggression.

The anarchist model is too flawed, even in its very name and in its slavish dogmatic adherence to statist misconceptions to ever achieve this. In fact as it's confusing, irrational and divisive, it will only do the opposite.

A large entrenched majority can't see the harm in 51% of people dictating to the other 49%.   The difficulty is convincing people that forcing others to go along with any agenda is the real problem and not the agenda which happened to win the vote.  But time after time the losing side will rail against the winning agenda as though their agenda is the better solution.

 

Contrary to the popular saying that people get the government they deserve, they actually get the government/s that the market demands.

There's no way that liberty can be imposed upon a population against its market demand for aggressive government. To change market demand requires education, advertising and demonstration by setting successful examples that inspire imitation.

I still have tinges of doubt because of the potential of a might always making right in an anarchic system.  Not that we don't already have that going on now.    What hope would a private individual have to proving damages to a DRO against a polluter?  Considering our government with its unlimited funds has a difficult problem doing it.   And how do you extract restitution from a destitute person for any crimes or damages they may inflict?   I can see how someone who has something to lose will behave but what of the people who have nothing to lose?

There will always be errors of judgment and even examples of corrupt, biased or other kinds of unethical behavior where less than perfect humans are involved, but in the competitive environment of voluntary civil government, the market acts to punish private courts with loss of market share to those courts that have less errors of judgment or dishonest behavior.

With monopoly government, the incentives are reversed to favor incompetence and corruption.

I believe that you have insufficient faith in the free market.

[BobRobertson]

The principal question posed by OP suggests anarchy=lawlessness.

Where did that graphic of "beating a dead horse" go when I need it?

The reason that the equation of "anarchy=lawlessness" has been so widely asserted is because it directly supports the existence of the state. Government historians, government schools, government studies, all constantly put forward the idea that without a government, people will have no governance of their interaction with others.

It's easy to demonstrate that this is false, because people constantly make voluntary rules by which they interact. As Davehollis points out, the 'Net itself has no "laws" defining how it works. It works because people agree to use commodity protocols, in well documented ways. Those who abuse those voluntary rules are rejected as anti-social, they are banned from forums, and if they violate the rules of their ISP then they will have their voluntary contracts which allow connectivity into the anarchic 'Net revoked.

It works specifically because there is no rule that says that you MUST interact with anyone at all. There is no one with the power to force you to deal with them, there is no government: anarchy.

[Richard Garner]

how many people would have absolutely nothing to lose?

Isn't it a truism the poor will always be with you?

God, yes. They just follow me around, in a big group, swarming and swarming, always with me!

[Terror Australis]

The principal question posed by OP suggests anarchy=lawlessness.

Where did that graphic of "beating a dead horse" go when I need it?

The reason that the equation of "anarchy=lawlessness" has been so widely asserted is because it directly supports the existence of the state. Government historians, government schools, government studies, all constantly put forward the idea that without a government, people will have no governance of their interaction with others.

It's easy to demonstrate that this is false, because people constantly make voluntary rules by which they interact. As Davehollis points out, the 'Net itself has no "laws" defining how it works. It works because people agree to use commodity protocols, in well documented ways. Those who abuse those voluntary rules are rejected as anti-social, they are banned from forums, and if they violate the rules of their ISP then they will have their voluntary contracts which allow connectivity into the anarchic 'Net revoked.

It works specifically because there is no rule that says that you MUST interact with anyone at all. There is no one with the power to force you to deal with them, there is no government: anarchy.

anarchy has the best porn....

[Bill Brasky]

Who enforces the DRO contract and makes Joe pay for his violations.  Aren't contracts and oaths similar in that you make a legal promise to another?  

I highly recommend Stefan Molyneux's free audio book Practical Anarchy, and the book previous to that in the series Everyday Anarchy.

The DRO would remove the funds from his bank account as authorized by the contract. If he lacked the funds to fully pay restitution the DRO would require him to work for them, in a job determined by his skills, until the victim is fully paid. It would not be necessary to use physical force against Joe unless he was completely irrational or mentally ill. In a society where reputation, formalized by the DROs, is everything you simply cant afford to wrong someone and not properly compensate them.

DRO's are magic.

[Terror Australis]

Although the net is lawless and can be dangerous there are many competing protective services selling anti virus products .It is entirely up to the individual to protect themself without needing a centralized monopoly on force.So those who argue that an anarchic system has never succeeded in history are missing the internet elephant in front of their noses.....

[MacFall]

how many people would have absolutely nothing to lose?

Isn't it a truism the poor will always be with you?

Well, that was said by Jesus, and I think it meant that there will always be the opportunity to help out people who are having a hard time. Poverty, as was known in Jesus' time, only exists today where governments confiscate people's property and prevent the creation of new wealth. So if he meant that true poverty will always exist, then he also meant that goverments will always be with us. And I don't believe that.

[Terror Australis]

how many people would have absolutely nothing to lose?

Isn't it a truism the poor will always be with you?

Well, that was said by Jesus, and I think it meant that there will always be the opportunity to help out people who are having a hard time. Poverty, as was known in Jesus' time, only exists today where governments confiscate people's property and prevent the creation of new wealth. So if he meant that true poverty will always exist, then he also meant that goverments will always be with us. And I don't believe that.

Only one person will be rich in a dictatorship.....

[libertylover]

I am not sure if this is still true.  But isn't the backbone of internet or core routers government owned and developed?  Don't various governments issue IP addresses to ISPs who resale them to their customers?   

I agree what happens on the net for the most part is by voluntary association.  With only a few involuntary ones like home arrest logs, tax pay systems or online traffic ticket payment.

[BonerJoe]

But isn't the backbone of internet or core routers government owned and developed?

I think even when the government did own equipment, it still leased lines from AT&T or whoever else for the communications.

The exchanges are definitely privately owned now though.

[Harry Tuttle]

But isn't the backbone of internet or core routers government owned and developed?

That doesn't matter. If all government owned backbone disappeared tomorrow they would be replaced within days by private backbone. All major carriers and many minor carriers have their own infrastructure and would use it. There may be piracy of IP addresses and DNS information on a small scale, but carriers would cooperate out of necessity to come up with their own methods for managing the routing of traffic.

[BobRobertson]

I am not sure if this is still true.  But isn't the backbone of internet or core routers government owned and developed?

Ok, here we go. Some day I should write this up as an article. But then I'd have to look up the dates of the things that happened before I got into it, to phooy.

Various colleges and universities used DARPA money in their development of the underlying protocols that fleshed out into what we know as TCP/IP. The National Science Foundation then ran what we know and love as the Internet, organizing the routing, and determing the rules under which organizations were allowed to connect. For instance, only non-commercial traffic was allowed. That didn't stop college students from making USEnet historic for its chaotic content.

There were only a couple (I'm certain of two, MetroAreaExchange-West and MAE-East) located at the NASA facilities of Goddard and Ames, where the various organizations came together to reach everyone else. This is the root of AlGore's "Information Superhighway", where the government would run the "backbone", and anyone wanting to connect to the 'Net would have to go through one of the 6 exchange points located around the country. By law.

After Clinton/Gore won in 1992, before they took office, the NSF did the one act of divestiture of power by government that I have ever witnessed: They declared access to the exchanges open, removed the non-commercial traffic restriction, and opened the routing tables so that each company connecting could route traffic to anyone else who agreed to route with them.

The hardware routers at the time were barely able to handle this. The NSF had managed it through dual RS6000 mini-computers on each exchange just to generate the routing tables, much less carry traffic. But Cisco made their fortune by improving their hardware fast enough to be able be "first to market" over the course of several years.

The company that had held the NSF contract to carry backbone traffic between the exchanges found itself very quickly abandoned by customers who now had the choice of backbone providers, to MCI, AT&T, Sprint (sprint SUCKS) and many others. This diversity of provider has created an environment where the dream of "a network that would survive a nuclear war" finally came true.

At the same time, the diversity of protocols and services exploded. Email still uses SMTP, but there are very few places that still use FTP, and WAIS and GOPHER have been buried by HTML and Google. Ah yes, Playboy.com was free once upon a time...

So the last time the "government" had anything to do with routing was 1992, and in the 5 years after that the routing protocols went through such massive reorganization and development that there really is nothing left of what government had been doing. It was only after government threw open the system that the entire 'Net that we know now became possible. All that government's control of the net did was retard its progress for a decade, at least.

Keep in mind that TCP/IP was never the only protocol available. It just was the most flexible, and it was the one that was never "owned" by any one organization unlike competitors like DECnet or NetBUI. The RFCs which document the basic protocols of the 'Net are the pinnacle of OpenSource, available for anyone to read, utilize, build upon. Build to that standard, and communicate with anyone else.

[davann]

By spiking the community water supply with chaos while it is in its liquid state.